Keynote 8: Crafting a Truly Equal Education System in Times of Change

Keynote 8: Crafting a Truly Equal Education System in Times of Change

The damaging impact of entrenched ideas of gender in our education system are routinely overlooked because these days, girls outperform boys in exams. This success masks a real problem: from the moment they are born, our children are fed gendered expectations about their future life that undermine our ability to make progress.Our nurseries and schools should be engine rooms for possibility, inspiring young women and men to achieve their full potential, free from gendered expectations about the life they should lead.

The Women’s Equality Party has a raft of policies – which we encourage all other political parties to steal – that will build a truly equal education system. WE want to make equality a stand-alone criterion for the inspection of schools – carried out by Ofsted (in England), Education Scotland, ETINI (in Northern Ireland) and Estyn (in Wales). And it is also time for women’s achievements to be reflected in curriculums across the UK.

As well as changing what is taught in schools, WE want to see changes in who delivers that teaching. WE want to see more men in childcare and primary teaching, and more women in senior leadership positions in schools, colleges and universities.